For our last adventure in Spain, we booked a jeep tour of Andalusia. Of course, that's a bit of an overstatement - as you can see from the Wikipedia article, Andalusia is quite large, and it includes all of the places we'd visited all week. This tour just covered some of the small towns in the immediate vicinity of the resort.
Our driver/guide was Paul, an Englishman who's been living in Spain for many years, but claimed not to speak any Spanish. Actually, I suspect that he knows a lot more Spanish than he let on. He was a quirky kind of guy.
This trip almost didn't get off the ground. As soon as he saw Trooper, he immediately said that the dog couldn't go on the tour. I started in with my usual spiel about how guide dogs are allowed to go anywhere the general public can go, but he was adamant. He said that the tour included visits to local farms, and the farmers didn't want dogs upsetting their livestock.
Well, Terry was unhappy, of course, and there was much argument back and forth, and I started thinking that because of the livestock, maybe this was one of the times when we shouldn't insist on bringing the dog, and I was also thinking that Terry still was sick, and maybe it would be just as well if we skipped the tour and spent the day resting. Terry later told me that she had been thinking the same things. In the end Terry told me to take Trooper back to the room, and we'd leave him for the day - at which point Paul said that if we kept the dog in the jeep, he'd take the chance of bringing him along. So off we went.
I mentioned a couple from England that were on the tour with us to Gibraltar. The same couple, with their daughter, were on the jeep tour with us. Their names were John and Helen, and their daughter was Nadia. Helen was originally from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, and she spoke with a lovely island accent.
At first, I tried to follow our route on my GPS, but I soon gave that up - Paul quickly left paved roads behind, and we spent much of the day driving on back roads like this:
Although, no matter how far off the beaten track we went, there were still people living there:
There were lots of panoramic views:
...and lots of trees and plants, including:
Almond trees...
Lavender plants...
...and a thousand year old olive tree
...as well as agave plants, and of course, lots of orange and lemon trees. At one point, Paul casually went over and picked a bunch of oranges and handed them out to us. He made a lot of jokes about "stealing" the oranges, and warned us to watch out for angry farmers with shotguns, but I'm pretty sure the tour company contracts with the local farmers for the right to pick the fruit.
We made several stops along the way. In the morning, we stopped in the town of Monda, for drinks at a local bar, La Jaula:
...where Terry, who was still sick, had coffee with brandy. And the brandy was a very special brand:
In Monda, I took a look at a fountain:
...attached to a structure which was a community laundry facility in Moorish times:
Later, we stopped on top of a ridge to admire the view of the town of Tolox:
...and to visit a shrine to San Roque (w). According to the legend, San Roque (aka Saint Roch) lived in the 14th century in France. To quote Wikipedia, "Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals...and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand...he himself finally fell ill...was expelled from the town and withdrew into the forest...he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman...supplied him with bread and licked his wounds, healing them." Consequently, he is generally depicted pointing to a plague scar on his leg, and accompanied by a dog with a loaf of bread in its mouth:
We stopped for a drink again in the town of Alozaina. Here, Terry discovered that the barmaid serving us was from Mexico. She had met her husband, who lived in Spain, on the Internet, and had come here to marry him. In the meantime, I was struck by this guitar (sort of) hanging on the wall:
According to Paul, there's a story (which he claimed was true, and I think that if it isn't, it oughta be) that at one time the town was saved from an attack by a Moorish army, when a group of quick-thinking women threw beehives down on them from the church tower. On the town gate, there's a plaque commemorating the event:
...and here's the church tower where it happened:
We drove through the town of Gibralgalia, where the streets were extremely narrow, and then drove through some fields filled with sheep:
I suspect that this was why Paul was concerned about bringing Trooper. We stopped to take pictures, but no one got out of the jeep - would we have gotten out if Trooper hadn't been with us? I guess we'll never know.
We then came to a river, the Rio Grande:
...not to be confused with the one between Texas and Mexico. Paul then proceeded to drive the jeep right across the river.
Next, we stopped for lunch at La Masia, a small restaurant in the town of Villafranco de Guadalhorce. There was a vending machine there, the kind where you put in a coin and turn the crank. Except instead of gumballs, this machine dispensed salted almonds - a large handful for one euro. I got two handfuls. After lunch, Paul demonstrated the correct way to drink from a wineskin:
...and invited each of us to try. Terry and I each took a stab at it:
And then we drove on to our last stop of the day, the town of Mijas. This town was a little larger than the others we had visited so far. Items of interest in the town included a shrine:
...and this former tower, now in use as a restaurant:
I was very interested in this museum:
...but unfortunately, it was closed.
But the most interesting item was the burro taxis:
...which would take you for a ride around town for a few euros. This sign told their story:
If you look closely at the apparently empty panel on the right, you'll see that it's not empty at all - it's Braille. I was impressed.
Here's a map showing the various locations we visited that day:
And that was it for the day. We got back to the resort, went out for some last minute tapas, and went to bed.